Then home secretary Alan Johnson revealing the design of the British national identity card. The scheme will now be cancelled. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

When the second reading of the identity documents bill takes place in the House of Commons later today, the coalition government will meet its commitment to scrap the ID card scheme. This bill is the first step the government will take to reduce control by the state and hand power pack to the people. It is not the job of government to collect and store vast amounts of biographical and biometric data belonging to innocent people.

People do not want the state keeping information on its citizens for some ill-defined and unproven benefit. Fewer than 15,000 people have bought an ID card since last November – and around 3,000 of those were issued free to workers at Manchester and London City airports.

Many claims have been made in recent years for supposed benefits of the identity card scheme – from tackling terrorism and fighting organised crime to preventing identity fraud. I don't believe these have, or ever would have, materialised. This is incredible given that the scheme, while delivering no increase in public protection, would also erode hard-won rights and freedoms and requires huge spending.

The estimated spend of £835m in costs over 10 years on the scheme is a significant amount of money, not "diddly squat" as Alan Johnson, the former home secretary, has publicly stated. This huge sum would have been extracted from all of us one way or the other – either because we would have been forced to buy the wretched cards or through taxation.

With the introduction of the identity documents bill, the coalition government has acted swiftly to turn back the increasing tide of government bureaucracy. We want to dismantle the scheme at minimum cost to the public and see early destruction of the personal data held on the national identity register and of the register itself.

Some campaigners have criticised our decision to continue issuing biometric residence permits while scrapping the ID card for UK citizens. This is misguided because the documents are very different. We are required by European Union law to provide biometric residence permits to non-EU foreign nationals. They are issued under entirely different legislation. They are not "ID cards for foreign nationals", as the previous government called them.

The biometric data is not kept on the national identity register, and there is no legal obligation for foreign nationals to carry their permit with them, so no one should ever be stopped and asked to produce the card. Unlike the identity card for British citizens, this card serves a purpose by helping foreign nationals easily prove they have a right to live and work freely in the UK.

This government wants to bring to an end the practice of the state gathering data for the sake of it. It is imperative the government is held accountable to the people it represents and does not abuse its position in key areas of personal freedom and liberty.

The identity documents bill is a major step on that road. Making the repeal of ID cards bill the first to be brought before parliament by the new government demonstrates how serious we are about creating a free society and reducing expenditure.

Cancelling the ID cards scheme and abolishing the national identity register is a major step in dismantling the surveillance state, but this bill is just the first step. It will be followed by a series of reforms to restore British freedom to our citizens.